Those who fiercely criticize the Synodal Path that the Catholic Church in Germany embarked upon in 2019 — and even those who enthusiastically support it — cannot deny that the Jesuit pope is responsible.

The only reason the Germans have been able to spend the past three years discussing carefully-argued proposals for major Church reforms — hardly any that are deemed acceptable by the vast majority of officials in the Vatican — is because Francis has allowed them to do so.

Benedict XVI and John Paul II would have never even considered or tolerated it. That should be clear to everyone.

It doesn't matter if one agrees with what the Germans are proposing — which includes the option for priests to marry; the inclusion of women at all levels of ecclesial governance and ministry; and a comprehensive review and reformulation of the Church's teaching on human sexuality, to name just the most salient points.

Whether one supports such changes or not makes little difference.

The horse has already bolted.

And now it's going to be near impossible for Francis to simply ignore the Germans' proposals out of hand without giving the impression that all his talk about synodality has been nothing but a sham.

He and everybody else know that.

That's also because the Catholics of Germany aren't the only ones who see the urgent need for a serious reform of the Church and not — as Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, called it — a reform in the Church.

He warned the German bishops during their Nov. 14-18 "ad limina visit" to heed the distinction.

And, indeed, it is a crucial one.

An intuition that opened pandora's box

But unlike the Italian cardinal (who has often been touted as a leading candidate to succeed Francis) and his confreres in the Roman Curia, the Germans have seen clearly that structural change is the real issue.

They are aware that the Church's current institutional model and structures are no longer fit for purpose.

The imperial-monarchical paradigm is long outdated and anachronistic.

It is also unsustainable and has increasingly become a burdensome impediment to promoting authentic Christian witness, discipleship and the spread of the gospel.

Perhaps Pope Francis is not fully 100% convinced of this, but he seems to at least intuit it.

Why else would he open up the pandora's box that synodality has proved itself to be in various ways?

The pope has his own personal limitations, like all of us, but one thing he is not, and that is stupid.

He can take the pulse of a room very quickly, even the pulse of the global living room where the proverbial elephants are lurking.

He knows very well that Catholics all over the world want things to change and he's urging them to explain what they think the changes should be.

When he refused to accept the proposal to ordain married men to the presbyterate, which was overwhelmingly approved in October 2019 by bishops attending the so-called Amazon Synod, it caused deep disappointment and even anger among many.

But that refusal did not close the debate.

If anything, it has only provoked more insistent calls to make clerical celibacy optional, as revealed by the Synodal Path (which the Germans began in December 2019) and the recent synodal consultations with Catholics around the world.

Bishop Bätzing stands up to Vatican cardinals

But the top officials in the Roman Curia made it clear during the German bishops' "ad limina" that they expect their confreres north of the Alps to put the brakes on what they see as a run-away train.

French-Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Dicastery for Bishops, even urged them to impose a moratorium on the Synodal Path, which is supposed to have its final session next March.

The response of Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK), was a polite but firm, "Nein, danke!"

It was impressive the way the 61-year-old bishop of Limburg stood up to the Vatican bureaucrats.

Despite the fact that he never studied in Rome, he did not seem at all intimidated by their attempts to use the old curia tactic of playing strong with the weak.

Bätzing showed no sign of weakness.

Just read the English translation of his opening remarks at the Nov. 18 meeting on the Synodal Path that he and his fellow countrymen held with Ouellet, Parolin and Cardinal Luis Ladaria SJ (Dicastery for Doctrine).

Right at the start the DBK leader pointed out that "the Synodal Presidium consists of two bishops and two lay people" and lamented that "essential persons" of the Synodal Path — the lay delegates — were not invited to Rome for the talks.

"And that is why our reflections, discussions, shared perspectives and possibly directions are subject to being discussed, communalised and appropriated with all those involved in the Synodal Path," he said.

In other words, he told the Vatican officials that he and his fellow bishops would agree to nothing without the consent of their lay partners.

"We urge you to listen to us in this plight."

The bishop was also unafraid to state the perplexity many German Catholics felt by the letter Pope Francis sent them in June 2019 to offer some guidelines and cautionary notes in the run-up to the Synodal Path.

"It has caused surprise that the pope's letter does not refer to the actual starting point of the Synodal Path, namely sexual abuse, the inadequate handling of it by Church authorities, the cover-up by bishops and also the continuing lack of transparency shown by Roman authorities in dealing with it," he said.

The Church "gambled away a lot of trust and credibility" as a result of the abuse crisis, Bishop Bätzing pointed out.

"We will only gain new trust if there is a major change in the way we exercise our ministry, involving clergy, religious and laity in decision-making and decision-taking in a serious and tangible way. And this not only applies to the Church in our country but also to the universal Church," he added.

"We urge you to listen to us in this plight," Bätzing pleaded.

Or was it a warning?

A contribution to the entire Church

He then batted back the numerous criticisms that thus far have been levelled at the Germans and their Synodal Path, whether by people at the Vatican or other more doctrinally rigid (conservative) Catholics.

For instance, he refuted accusations that the Germans were flirting with schism or looking to set up a national Church, even taking umbrage at such a suggestion.

"I am saddened by the power this word (schism) has acquired, with which one tries to deny us catholicity and the will to stay united with the universal Church. Unfortunately, this also includes the rather inaccurate comparison with a 'good Protestant Church'," the DBK president said.

That comparison, unfortunately, was actually made by the pope himself.

"No new Church is being founded, but the decisions of the Synodal Path ask, based on Holy Scripture, Tradition and the last Council, how we can be Church today — missionary and dynamic, encouraging and present, serving people and helping one another," Bishop Bätzing told the Vatican representatives.

He insisted that Germany's Catholics want only to "contribute to the conversation" going on in the entire Church.

The next several months

So what happens next?

Pope Francis has sometimes given mixed signals but has mostly voiced some of the same concerns the Synodal Path's critics expressed.

Nonetheless, he has not stepped in to halt the process.

At the last minute, it seems, he even decided not to attend the Nov. 18 meeting between the German bishops and his Vatican aides. That was likely done to give the participants full freedom to hash out their difference — and for him to remain above the fray.

The Synodal Path is scheduled to hold its final session in just four months' time.

Obviously, there are those, including many Vatican officials, who would like to see the pope step in and impose the moratorium that Cardinal Ouellet had suggested.

But that would be seen in Germany, and in many other quarters, as the atomic option. And it would likely create a disaster, leaving damage impossible to repair.

That's because many, if not most, of the reforms that Catholics in Germany are demanding, are the same ones that believers in more docile parts of the Church are also embracing.

Over these months leading up to October 2023 and the international Synod assembly here in Rome, many will be following the movement of the Synodal Path to see if the changes it's pushing for gain greater momentum and wash over the rest of the Church.

• Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

In both countries, there's one Catholic for every 200 people, as opposed to roughly one for five in the United States.

The Nov. 19-26 trip will be the pontiff's fourth to Asia, following South Korea (2014), Sri Lanka and the Philippines (2015), and Bangladesh and Myanmar (2017).

Though his first priority will be to boost the small local Catholic communities, Pope Francis is bound to focus most of his 18 scheduled speeches - all in Spanish - on issues close to his heart and which heavily affect these countries.

The wide range of topics likely will include human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in Thailand's sexual tourism industry; the death penalty; corruption; and the high number of suicides among young people.

He's also expected to call for peace and nuclear disarmament, especially during stops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and care for the environment.

Just to put some of these priorities into context:

• Sex tourism: Both girls and boys as young as ten years old are forced into prostitution in Thailand, either by local pedophiles or foreign sex tourists. Often they're forced to service five to ten clients a day, constituting what Pope Francis condemns as "modern day slavery," and a "crime against humanity." UNICEF describes child prostitution as "one of the gravest infringements of rights that children can endure."
• The death penalty: The pontiff recently changed the official compendium of Catholic teaching to reflect that capital punishment is never admissible. However, it's still allowed in Japan. The local Church has invited Iwao Hakamada, an 86-year old man who spent 48 years on death row, to meet Pope Francis. This former boxer and Catholic convert was released in 2014 when DNA analysis proved the evidence against him could have been planted.
• Suicide: According to a 2018 government report, 250 elementary and high school-age children in Japan took their own lives between 2016 and 2017 for a variety of reasons including bullying, family issues and stress. It's the top cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 39, and Japan's suicide rate is the sixth highest in the world.
• Peace: While in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world's only two cities to have experienced nuclear weapons, Francis is expected to reiterate his calls for nuclear disarmament. Though post-war Japan has a history of pacificism, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is currently attempting to revise the constitution to allow for rearmament. (The Nippon Carta Magna, article nine, states that the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right, aspiring "to an international peace based on justice and order.") Continue reading

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The menu included lasagna, chicken in a cream of mushroom sauce, potatoes, sweets, fruit and coffee.

Some 150 tables were set up in a Vatican hall where Francis normally holds his weekly indoor audiences with the public.

Another 1,500 were treated to a similar lunch elsewhere in Rome, and parishes throughout the diocese were similarly serving lunch for those who were unable to afford their own.

Lunch follows on from a week of free medical clinics set up in St Peter's Square where volunteer doctors give the homeless and disadvantaged free specialist health care.

General care is available year-round nearby, another of Francis' initiatives.

Also, on Friday, Francis opened a new place for the homeless on the doorstep of the Vatican.

Just a few metres away from the colonnade of St Peter's Square, the building occupies an entire four-storey building owned by the Vatican.

Up until a few months back, the building, Palazzo Migliori was used by a female religious congregation.

Transferred to the Papal Almoner - Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, it now has a second life.

"It is the name of the family that owned it before 1930 and sold it to the Vatican, but it also translates in Italian to ‘the Palace of the Best' - and indeed considering who will stay here, it is exactly the case", Krajewski told Crux.

With historic wooden ceilings, pieces of art on the walls and now equipped with an elevator, inside it is nothing like homeless shelter.

"I asked a construction company to let the homeless workers do the renovation.

"They agreed a bit hesitantly but then they were so happy with their work, they decided to hire those people - the owner of the company said they rarely see people who would work so hard", said Krajewski.

Marking the World Day of the Poor at Mass in St Peter's Basilica, Francis lamented the lack of concern about the growing gap between the have's and have nots.

Dismayed over society's indifference towards poor people, Francis said that the 'greed of a few' is compounding the plight of the poor.

"We go our way in haste, without worrying that gaps are increasing, that the greed of a few is adding to the poverty of many others," he said.

These moves, a mark of his papacy, are not without criticism.

Francis' emphasis on mercy and charity is raising the ire of a small but noisy faction, among them, more conservative bishops and cardinals who would rather the pope concentrate of dogma and matters of faith rather than social issues.

Sources

• Associated Press
• Crux

Bishop Dooley (top left) is among the 74 newly-appointed bishops from 34 countries in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America including those as diverse as Algeria, Myanmar, Cameroon and Indonesia attending a 12-day seminar learning about the roles and responsibilities of bishops.

Bishop Dooley is intrigued by the meeting.

"I found it fascinating to listen to bishops who came from countries that had great challenges with poverty and violence.

"At breakfast, a bishop from Central Africa told me how his Vicar General had been shot and killed last month in a robbery," he told CathNews.

The vast cultural differences were reinforced when discussing priestly vocations, he said.

"One Nigerian bishop had 150 seminarians for his Diocese, a Vietnamese bishop had a seminary in his Diocese with 500 students".

With enormously different challenges, Bishop Dooley is impressed with the participants' openness and genuine concern for people.

"We have very different environments to minister in but a common mission in Christ," he said.

No to power, rich in relationships

Describing Pope Francis' address as 'energetic,' Bishop Dooley said the pope encouraged the new bishops to be people of prayer, to be shepherds who consult with their 'flock' and to share the passion and cross of Jesus.

Revisiting his strong anti-clericalism message, Francis told the new bishops to "Just say no to abuse - of power, conscience or any type," reports Crux.

He also warned the new bishops about being dominating leaders, saying that bishops must reject the clerical culture that often places clergy on a pedestal.

"The bishop can't have all the gifts - the complete set of charisms - even though some think they do.

"Poor things," he said.

"Don't think you are lords of the flock - you are not the masters of the flock, even if some people would like you to be or certain local customs promote that," the pope told them.

"Be men who are poor in things and rich in relationships, never harsh or surly but friendly, patient, simple and open."

Prayer is who you are, and what you do

Pope Francis encouraged the bishops always to pray, saying prayer is not just one of a bishop's daily tasks, but rather must be the foundation of everything a bishop does, reports America.

"It is easy to wear a cross on your chest, but the Lord is asking you to carry a much heavier one on your shoulders and in your heart: he asks you to share his cross", he said.

Unity

In perhaps a sideswipe at the outspoken and self-serving Archbishop Vigano, Pope Francis encouraged unity within the Church and among bishops.

"The Church needs unity of bishops, not lone actors working outside the chorus, conducting their own personal battles," Francis said.

Bishop Dooley: a man of the people

A Southland farm boy, Michael Dooley used to watch over his father's flock.

Leaving the farm, Dooley completed an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner and didn't expect to enter the seminary, let alone become a bishop.

He completed a bachelor of theology degree at the University of Otago and later earned a master of theology degree in Melbourne.

A few years back, Dooley offered land behind St Peter Chanel parish in Green Island, South Dunedin, to be used for a community garden.

He described the land as a "blank canvas" for the community to establish its garden.

Dooley relates to Pope Francis' view of the church and its place in the world.

"Rather than being a fortress mentality, it's an idea of engaging with the world," he told the ODT.

Sources

• Rome Reports
• ODT
• CathNews
• Crux
• America Magazine
• Image: Rome Reports

The shock waves this time came from substantiated sex abuse allegations that a well-known cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, a retired archbishop of Washington, had molested boys; he was forced to resign last month from the College of Cardinals.

Then came the grand jury report out of Pennsylvania detailing 70 years of horrific abuse by some 300 priests, too much of it facilitated by bishops.

It has all landed on the desk of the current pope, and the scandals have the potential to undermine the Francis pontificate.

It shouldn't.

Indeed, if Pope Francis lives up to his own words and actions, this could be a chance for him to advance his vision of church reform and turn a long-running crisis into an opportunity for long-term renewal.

This eruption was inevitable

At a historic meeting in Dallas in June 2002, American bishops agreed to a comprehensive set of policies designed to protect children and punish offending priests.

But with other observers, those of us in the media — the people regularly accused of trying to "bring down the church" — shook our heads as the bishops effectively exempted themselves from genuine oversight or discipline for failing in their jobs, the sin that truly scandalized the faithful.

Only Rome could investigate bishops, they said, and only the pope could punish them.

That wasn't likely.

The Vatican under John Paul II was not very keen on the United States hierarchy's new policy against priests, and the pontiff certainly didn't want to throw his own bishops under the bus.

Now the scandal has even some of John Paul's staunchest fans questioning the wisdom of his canonization in 2014, and it bedeviled Pope Benedict up to his stunning 2013 resignation.

A Church living in itself, of itself, for itself

In closed-door meetings on the eve of the conclave that elected him in March 2013, Pope Francis — then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires — gave a brief, powerful address in which he said the church needed to open up or risk becoming

• "self-referential" and
• "sick" with
• "theological narcissism" that leads to the worst evil,
• "spiritual worldliness" of an institution that is "living in itself, of itself, for itself."

The church, he was saying, had to undergo a moment of kenosis, of self-emptying, like Christ on the cross, surrendering power and prestige and privilege in order to truly become what she is called to be.

As pope, he has saved his harshest rhetoric for his fellow clerics, especially the cardinals and bishops, criticizing them as "careerists" and "airport bishops" who spend more time flying around the world than tending their flock.

"Clericalism is a perversion of the church," Pope Francis told 70,000 young Italian Catholics at a rally this month. "The church without testimony is only smoke."

Pope Francis' vision of the church is clearly more radical than the defensive posture of John Paul or the nostalgic traditionalism of Benedict. But is he willing and able to implement it? Continue reading

• David Gibson (pictured) is the director of the Centre on Religion and Culture at Fordham University.

In the small west of Ireland town that is home to the huge Marian shrine complex, it was hard to find a space on the tightly packed pews at 11am mass last week.

The rows of the faithful - some women's heads draped with lace - offered responses to the priest in confident voices.

Outside the chapel, built on the spot where 15 people believed they witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1879, pilgrims filled bottles with holy water at a line of fonts or queued to complete mass cards for loved ones.

Priests were available to hear confession.

An office across Main Street offered a marriage introduction service - "all applications treated in strictest confidence".

The facade of the Fairfield restaurant was being repainted in Vatican yellow, and finishing touches being put to a gleaming new piazza opposite the shrine.

Souvenir shops were already stocked with "Pope Francis 2018" fridge magnets, alongside rosaries and figurines.

"The excitement is palpable," said Father Richard Gibbons, Knock's parish priest for the past six years.

Francis flys into Ireland

This weekend the papal plane will touch down at Knock's international airport, privately built and operated to cater for 1.5 million-plus annual visitors to the shrine, many seeking a miraculous cure for physical or psychological ailments.

The pope will spend an hour at the shrine - a few moments of private prayer, an address to those gathered outside the vast basilica and a whizz round in his popemobile - during a 36-hour visit to Ireland, most of which will be spent at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin.

Remarkably, his trip will be only the second papal visit to a country noted for its Catholic traditions.

The first was 39 years ago, when Pope John Paul II also visited Knock on the centenary of the apparition.

Some 450,000 people turned out to see him there; in total, an estimated 2.5 million - more than half the combined population of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland at the time - attended events or cheered on the streets during the three-day trip.

This time 45,000 tickets have been allocated in Knock.

"With the level of interest we've had, we could have quadrupled that," said Gibbons. Half a million tickets have been distributed for the papal mass in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

A vastly different Ireland

Ireland has changed profoundly between the two papal visits - "1979 and today are a world away in every regard," said Gibbons.

"Francis is well aware of that, and he may address those changes while he's here.

"He's not one for shirking difficult issues."

There is no shortage of such issues for the pope to choose from. The

• legacy of decades of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up;
• cruelty meted out to vulnerable women in the notorious Magdalene laundries;
• forced adoption by Catholic agencies of babies born to unmarried women;
• robust rejection this spring by the Irish population of church teaching on abortion;
• slump in people attending mass, down to 2% of the population in some districts of Dublin;
• crisis in vocations (the recruitment of priests) which means that within a few years even if people are inclined to go to mass, there will be no priest to lead it.

This autumn another symbolic pillar of Catholicism is expected to fall when the Irish people vote on removing the offence of blasphemy from the country's constitution.

The referendum will be held just a few months after Francis declared that "blasphemy, the sin against the Holy Spirit, is the only unpardonable sin" in an address from St Peter's Square. Continue reading

• Harriet Sherwood is a journalist with the Guardian and the Observer, writing about religion and social issues.
• Image: The Guardian

Jesus did not mince words when he said, "Woe to you who are rich," after listing the Beatitudes as written according to St. Luke, the pope said in a morning homily.

If anyone today "were to preach like that, the newspapers the next day (would say), 'That priest is a communist!' But poverty is at the heart of the Gospel," Francis said.

Celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae May 24, Francis focused his homily on the day's first reading from the Letter of James (5:1-6) in which the apostle scolds the rich. Not only has their wealth "rotted away," the decay and corrosion of their material possessions "will be a testimony against you" on judgment day, the passage says.

James criticized employers who withheld wages from their workers, the pope said, and those workers' cries reached the ears of the Lord.

People today mistakenly might think James is "a union representative," Francis said, but he is an apostle whose words were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Even in Italy, there are those who leave people out of work to protect their assets, but whoever does this, "Woe to you!" not according to the pope, but according to Jesus, he said.

Jesus, he said, is the one who says, "Woe to you who exploit people, who exploit labour, who pay under the table, who don't pay pension contributions, who don't offer vacation days. Woe to you!"

Wage theft, like "skimming" from people's paychecks, "is a sin; it is a sin," the pope said, even if the employer goes to Mass every day, belongs to Catholic associations and prays novenas.

When an employer doesn't pay what is due, he said, "this injustice is a mortal sin. You are not in God's grace. I'm not saying this, Jesus says it, the Apostle James says it."

The condemnation is severe because "wealth is idolatry" that seduces people, and Jesus knew people could not serve two masters — they must choose either God or money, Francis said.

Wealth "grabs you and doesn't let you go, and it goes against the first commandment" to love God with all one's heart, he said.

It also goes against the second commandment to love one's neighbor, he said, because a love of wealth "destroys the harmonious relationship between us" and "makes us selfish," he said. It "ruins life, ruins the soul." Continue reading

• Image: Philly Employment Lawyer

That odd declaration came after the newspaper La Repubblica published a front-page article on Thursday by an atheist, left-wing and anticlerical giant of Italian journalism, who reported that during a recent meeting the pope had said that hell did not exist.

Bad souls are "not punished," the journalist, Eugenio Scalfari, 93, reported the pope as saying. "A hell doesn't exist."

Nor, for Mr Scalfari, does a tape recorder or notebook or the orthodoxy of quotation marks.

The Vatican characterized the remarks as misquotations.

In the past, Mr Scalfari, the founder of La Repubblica, a bible of the Italian left that he edited for decades, has admitted to sometimes putting words in the papal mouth.

But the infernal remarks, especially as the pope prepared for Easter Sunday celebrations, proved too tempting for international tabloids, conservative websites antagonistic to the pope and many others to let go.

"Pope Declares No Hell," read a screaming headline across the Drudge Report website.

"Does the Pope Believe in Hell?" asked Patrick J Buchanan in an online column.

"Vatican literally falls apart after Pope Francis says ‘Hell doesn't exist,'" read a headline in Metro UK, a British newspaper.

The pope, in fact, has often talked about hell as a very real final destination for the wicked, and the Vatican made clear that the "literal words pronounced by the pope are not quoted" and that "no quotation of the article should be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father."

Mr Scalfari agreed.

"They are perfectly right," said Mr Scalfari in an interview on Friday night, as the pope prepared for a ceremonial leading of the stations of the cross on Good Friday. "These are not interviews, these are meetings, I don't take notes. It's a chat."

While Mr Scalfari said he remembered the pope saying hell did not exist, he allowed that "I can also make mistakes."

He said he had committed an error of omission by failing to fully explain the pope's answer on the need for a stronger Europe.

"At my age," Mr Scalfari said, he was more used to being interviewed than interviewing.

The editor of La Repubblica, Mario Calabresi, said the paper had not labeled Mr Scalfari's piece as an interview.

It was, Mr Calabresi said, the fruit of a "cultural exchange and dialogue out of the 19th century between a Jesuit believer and a man of the enlightenment fascinated by religion."

Sophisticated readers of Italian journalism understand how to read Mr Scalfari, which is to say, with a grain of salt when it comes to papal quotations.

To many here, Mr Scalfari personifies an impressionistic style of Italian journalism, prevalent in its coverage of the Vatican, politics and much else, in which the gist is more important than the verbatim, and the spirit greater than the letter.

And yet, despite the public relations headaches Mr Scalfari has caused, Francis, 81, seems to like talking to him.

The pope, Mr Scalfari said, has a "need to talk with a nonbeliever who stimulates him." This month's meeting was their fifth. Continue reading

• Image: NYT

There was a time in life when I wanted change and wanted it now.

I still want things done now, but over the course of the years, I discovered that, at least where the church is concerned, I was looking for action in the wrong places.

As Sean Freyne, the Irish theologian and Scripture scholar, put it, "It's a mistake to think that a pope has the power to do anything."

Translation: The right to reign as an autocrat, to take unilateral action about almost anything, does not come with the miter and crossed keys.

Nor, for that matter, does it come with the capes and crosses of bishops.

That question is making the rounds after the pope seemed completely unaware of the details of a Chilean sex abuse scandal, a failing that soured his recent trip there and forced him to do an about-face.

It also came up after his abrupt, no-explanation dismissal of a respected Vatican bank manager.

And it rose to the fore when he was accused by a cardinal of not realizing that his own diplomats were "selling out" the underground Catholic Church in China for the sake of political expediency.

Some Vatican observers now wonder if Francis is getting enough of the high-quality briefings one needs to be a world leader, or whether Francis is relying more on his own instincts and informants who slip him unofficial information on the side.

In his five years as pope, Francis has created an informal, parallel information structure that often rubs up against official Vatican channels.

That includes a papal kitchen cabinet of nine cardinal advisers who meet every three months at the Vatican and have the pope's ear, plus the regular briefings he receives from top Vatican brass.

The Vatican this week issued a remarkable defense of Francis' information flow and his grasp of the delicate China dossier.

The Holy See press office insisted that Francis followed the China negotiations closely, was being "faithfully" briefed by his advisers and was in complete agreement with his secretary of state on the topic.

"It is therefore surprising and regrettable that the contrary is affirmed by people in the church, thus fostering confusion and controversy," said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke.

Francis lives at the Vatican's Santa Marta hotel rather than the Apostolic Palace, where he can more easily keep his door open at all hours, and where a network of friends, informants and advisers provide back channels of information to him.

"The problem is he's the victim of the Santa Marta syndrome," said Massimo Franco, columnist for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

"The pope wanted to live there because he didn't want any filter from the secretary of state. But the other side of the coin is that he's condemned to receive quite casual information, and not always very accurate."

At Santa Marta, the pope sets his own agenda, makes his own phone calls and arranges his own visitors' schedule, often without the knowledge of the Vatican's protocol office. He neither watches TV nor browses the internet but reads the Rome daily Il Messaggero and a selection of press clippings for his non-Vatican news.

Some of his information arrives in person, some of it on paper, left for him in a red leather-bound folder at the Santa Marta front desk, brought upstairs by a Swiss Guard and handed over to one of the pope's two private secretaries.

Francis has two main gatekeepers, Monsignor Yoannis Lahzi Gaid, an Egyptian Copt who used to work in the Vatican's secretariat of state, and Monsignor Fabian Pedacchio, an Argentine priest who Francis, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, dispatched to Rome in 2007.

He also has the prefect of the papal household, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, who arranges official audiences and decides who gets to greet the pope after his weekly Wednesday general audience.

Sometimes popes suffer when their gatekeepers fail them: Pope Benedict XVI famously lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, unaware that a simple Google search would have turned up the bishop's belief that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth.

But more than his immediate predecessor Benedict, Francis still relies on a close circle of friends from his days in Argentina and as a high-ranking Jesuit to give him the pulse of what's going on.

And he can be fiercely stubborn once he has made up his mind based on information that does reach him, such as his recent dismissal of the respected No. 2 at the Vatican bank, Giulio Mattietti, who was fired without explanation at the end of the year.

In his subsequent Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, Francis blasted Vatican staff who have been sidelined, saying "they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a 'pope kept in the dark.'"

But with Chile's priest sex abuse scandal, Francis was forced to admit he had not only made a mistake, but maybe he was the one in the dark. Continue reading

The Pope's comments on gender were made during a private meeting last week with bishops from Poland.

During the meeting Francis lamented children are being taught at school that gender can be a choice.

"Today, in schools they are teaching this [gender choosing] to children - to children! - that everyone can choose their gender."

"We are living a moment of annihilation of man as image of God," the Pope concluded.

The Vatican, Tuesday, released the transcript of the closed-door remarks.

Gender, transsexual issues and sexual reassignment surgery are receiving a great deal of attention and support in the media, schools, government and in health professionals today.

"The idea that one's sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics," writes Dr. Paul McHugh, former Chairperson of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change.

"It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges."

Opposition to Dr McHugh's stance is strong, with Transadvocate commentators saying he appears to selectively reading the literature to support his own agenda.

Source

• The Washington Post
• The Wall Street Journal
• Transadvocate
• Childhealing.com
• Image: Pixabay

"Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family."

"Too often, attention is diverted from the needs of populations, insufficient emphasis is placed on work in the fields, and the goods of the earth are not given adequate protection. As a result, economic imbalance is produced, and the inalienable rights and dignity of every human person are ignored."

After reading those statements, you might be thinking that Pope Francis has released his highly anticipated encyclical on the environment ahead of its projected June publication date, but that is not the case.

Nor do we have an advance copy.

These statements — each making a strong case for responsibly caring for God's creation — all were given by Pope Benedict XVI at various times during his pontificate. There is a reason our former pontiff earned the nickname "the green pope."

Yet despite his consistent voice on the issue, the environment remains one of the most politically charged and divisive issues facing the modern Church, particularly in the West.

This especially has been the case in recent weeks as the world awaits the release of Francis' encyclical.

The main bone of contention in this debate is climate change.

While we do believe that this is an issue that has serious implications on human welfare, we are not choosing to argue its merits today.

On the contrary, we acknowledge the right of all parties engaged in the debate to participate in a rational and responsible exchange of thoughts, ideas and information.

A line is crossed, however, when such rational exchange turns into venom-spewing, ideologically based commentary.

And this is what has taken place.

Well before the encyclical's release, a veritable campaign against its content has not only been initiated, but has been growing in intensity.

That these efforts presuppose the document's content is bad enough, but they have gone much further.

Some Catholic observers and commentators have recommended that their fellow members in faith completely ignore the work, calling it baseless and not a priority.

Others have even mocked the Holy Father and questioned his mental state.

It's shameful behavior, and hardly befitting a Church that calls itself "one, holy and apostolic."

That the majority of this vitriol should come at the hands of self-styled conservatives is as disappointing as it is ironic.

Just a few short years ago, with Pope Benedict at the helm of the Church, it was these same Catholics calling on their self-styled liberal counterparts to not ignore or berate the teachings or the office of the Holy Father — in short to not be "cafeteria Catholics" when they disagreed with Benedict.

Now the situation is reversed, and these offended Catholics are becoming the perpetrators of the same offensive abuse. Continue reading